Moon Base Constructor

aerial 2023-10-02 09:35

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This game is super neat. Fun gameplay and very cool art style. I really like building stuff and managing resources. I managed to meet the goal and would have loved to play a lot more but there was a huge lag spike after I had like 6 pylons. Also I think that it would be nice if the mining building had a tip to what is being mined because you can't tell when you click on it unless you remember what the colors are referring to. Overall the game is very enjoyable and well made. Excellent work!

seam00se 2023-10-02 14:46

@aerial Thank you for the feedback! I'm glad you enjoyed the game. Especially the art style, since that was something I was a bit worried about when making it. Thank you for letting me know about the lag spike. It's something that I thought could happen, given how I manage pylons rather poorly, but I didn't have time to come up with a solution. I honestly didn't think anyone would play that long to encounter it lol.

vadzim 2023-10-03 01:09

Quite entertaining and meditative manager. Creating the base on the Moon is quite interesting, but personally I missed the synergy between the buildings. It would be very cool to add them. Overall, great job.

lou-bagel 2023-10-03 01:30

I didn't have a lot of time right now, but I am definitely gonna come back when I do, now that I got a few things figured out.

My main struggle at the beginning was not realizing the left panel could scroll down, so I wasn't aware of all the resources and why I couldn't build certain things. After I got a hang of it, it would have been nice to be able to hide that panel, as it takes up a lot of room, but still see the resource count, like with just icons and numbers that would take up less space.

seam00se 2023-10-03 01:33

@lou-bagel Thank you for the feedback! Thanks for letting me know about the UI issues. Maybe making it a bit more obvious that there are more things in the limits menu would be better. On top of that, you can actually hide that menu by pressing the button to the top-right of it (the one that you clicked to open in), but I guess I gotta work on my UI to make that more apparent. Thank you!

zealous-coder 2023-10-03 01:47

Can confirm the lag spike after like 4 pylons, I am running a potato. I love the art style overall well done it was a bit forgiving as I made some mistakes in the beginning and had to destroy one building. I am a sucker for a building/management game. I felt there might have been some counter balance to create some urgency I noticed you could over deploy your robots but not sure if it did anything. I see the definite Frostpunk influences (which I love).

I did not exactly like the constant menu hiding/showing I had to do I feel like that was a hinderance. Not sure why you choose to do it, I would have liked the resource icons always visible same with the building expendables. If they would collapse/expand on hover is an easy option.

I like that you actually disabled with a warning if you remove robots from a pylon or destroy one, kudos on that. Of course after meeting the goal there was not much reason to continue building except to perhaps see what was out there and how far you could take it. As you can see I'm a messy builder not much incentive to organize. Overall great job!

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seam00se 2023-10-03 01:55

@zealous-coder Thank you for the feedback! I may go back and fix the pylon issue if I have the time... But for now I guess I gotta live with it. Yeah after thinking about it, I should have made the resource menu a gui bar on the top (like, little icons that are out of the way) instead of a huge menu. Would've been smart but oh well. I actually haven't heard about frostpunk until now... and I can totally see that now lol. Might check that game out ngl Thank you for playing!

noya 2023-10-03 02:17

I really like the art style, especially the color palette, and the music was nice too. 😊 And the short intro is a lovely idea! I'm impressed with the amount of buildings you created in 48h. The interface is easy to use, but the menus covered a lot of screen space, which sometimes made it hard to place a building. I think the game would benefit from resource chains; a limit didn't really feel limiting to me because you could increase it with just one building. That said, I played it to the end, it was quite addicting and reminded me a little bit of a fast clicker game. Well done! 💜

brokenbridge 2023-10-03 09:01

Very cool game. It's similar to my entry but yours is much more complex and clearer in its mechanics I think. But if you want you can give my game a try. As others mentoned the colors are very pleasant to look at and the music gives it a chill atmosphere. I wish I had more time to accomplish something similar to this. Good work!

quasilyte 2023-10-03 15:20

Wow, this foldable UI is a gem for a game like this. I usually struggle to place all the necessary things on the screen, but hiding the unused windows away solves it. It might sound obvious, but it's not something I saw implemented in a jam games.

The music, combined with an art style, create a cool retro-style game atmosphere. It looks like you really tried to create a great sound for your game; the music is like 10 times better than what I managed to create for my game. That's really an area I want to improve on in the future.

I haven't completed the game, but I spent ~10 minutes in it and it was a good experience.

You get extra points from me for making this game runnable in the browser. :D It took a while to load, but hey, I have time. :D

quasilyte 2023-10-03 15:23

Also, this is one of the few games that get a Mood rating from me. :) I think you captured the vibe pretty good with this one. I like the moon depression atmosphere. :D

lou-bagel 2023-10-03 23:10

@seam00se - I left a comment on itch page to explain further what I meant. Figured it was easier to explain with images there.

Nice game tho!

seam00se 2023-10-03 23:40

@quasilyte Thank you for the feedback! While I have some problems with how I managed the UI, I'm happy with what I was able to do. I'm surprised about your comment on my music, since that was one of the more challenging parts of the jam for me. But, I'm glad you enjoyed it!

stmate03 2023-10-06 11:34

This is a very fun game, easily expandable, the art is awesome, it has a sweet spot for me because I vouch for a moonbase being a thing, the music is nice, sound design is great, overall a very fun game, unfortunately on the web version it has a huge lagspike issue, but otherwise a fun game, would be fun to see it expand a bit too :D

seam00se 2023-10-06 13:54

@stmate03 I'm glad you enjoyed it! Thank you so much actually, because I didn't realize until you mentioned it that the web version is the one with the lag spike. I've been tinkering with the game to try to find where the lag spike is, and then boiled it down to maybe a hardware issue. However, I was testing on the windows version! Of course the one that people are going to play is the web version, and of course that one would have the lag spike issue sooner than the windows one... Thank you for helping me realize this lol.

lcstark 2023-10-09 18:56

Amazing compo entry! It's impressive how much you've managed to do in only 48 hours. All the systems needed for gameplay, all the different types of buildings, plus all the sounds and music... Nicely done!

The artstyle is great, I always love simple and clean pixelart. And the accompanying music fits it really well. Though speaking of music, I've had one issue with it - it seems that after the track finishes playing, it doesn't restart, leaving the game without music for a long time. Then it starts again at seemingly random times. I've thought that maybe it restarts on building construction (or at least the victory goal building), as it happened several times when I built something, ~~but that might have been a coincidence~~. After trying it several more times I'm convinced the music restarts only when you build one of the victory buildings. If you don't, the game stays silent.

One thing I'd like to see added is keyboard control for the camera, like with WASD keys. The screen-edge is pretty difficult to use when playing in windowed mode (though it's fine in fullscreen).

Other than that, there's not much more for me to say that others haven't already. Well done on making a cool game, and I hope you're going to keep working on it after the jam!

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seam00se 2023-10-09 19:06

@lcstark Thanks for the feedback! Yeah, that's exactly how the music works here. It plays for the first time when you place your first storage unit down, and then it plays again after each goal building is built. I meant for it to be always playing music, and for there to be more than one track. That way, it could fade in and out multiple tracks while building. But, I ran out of time and could only make 1. Better controls for the camera is something I totally wish I did, especially since I spent the time to add keyboard shortcuts to the UI buttons... Still, I'm glad you enjoyed it!

lcstark 2023-10-09 19:24

@seam00se Oh, that makes sense! No worries, that one track is great. It does remind me of something, but I can't figure out what. Did you have any specific inspirations for it, or was it just an effect of music jamming? :P

seam00se 2023-10-10 00:44

@lcstark I was listening to music from Shapez.io and FTL while making it. So, I was aiming for something similar for a city-builder like game, but just colder and quiet I guess. But to be honest, I just wrote something and thought "Whelp, doesn't sound terrible!" four hours before the deadline lol

aviv-levy 2023-10-13 18:00

This seems like a great game but the UX makes this somewhat unplayable for me. I think it's a not a great decision to hide the menus and the most important information. How much power do I have? What does this building require? How many robots this has assigned? How many robots do I have? The information that should be visible is hidden behind clicks or sliding panels. Could definitely display the building panels, building costs, storage, limits, robots, material collection, etc at all times or at least use on-hover tooltips. I'm all for minimalism, but not at the cost of playability.

The art and music and overall atmosphere are really good!

I don't want to miss out on what looks like a really nice and polished game, so I'll definitely try again later when I have more time.

bytomancer 2023-10-14 23:43

I love this aesthetic. Looks like you adhered strong to a palette, using just enough color to make the buildings pop. And the music is very relaxing.

I do wish there was a bit of opposition or something that created a bit of tension, as I find these types of games more enjoyable with a drive to complete the objective before dying, or the enemies get stronger, or something.

The theme was well executed in the build space, but I would have loved some arrow key camera controls. A little bit of zoom out (or smaller menus) would have been appreciated too, the interface tended to clutter the screen as I would watch the resources increase with the build menu prepared to place the building.

Ultimately, it's a solid game and I did enjoy it to completion.

aviv-levy 2023-10-15 23:16

I gave it another try. I'm really impressed with what you managed to create within 48 hours! My feedback with the UX still stands, but you get used to it after a while... I understand you wanted to keep the pixel size consistent - I ran into the same problem when creating lower-res pixel art (which I very much adore!), and I think you should've compromised on the consistency and just used smaller fonts. If you expand on this game, probably make it *just* a bit higher res so the fonts won't look inconsistent with the low-res style.

I have some nit-picky feedback too if that's alright: - I would love the option to deactivate buildings. It's probably only helpful at the beginning though... - I didn't really use the solar panels tbh. I spammed reactors - The pylons adding endless space felt a bit... Cheaty? - I think there should be more restrictive / hostile elements... Currently, the challenge comes from simply gathering resources and making room, organizing, etc... - It was not clear you could add more robots than the maximum amount, and for some structures it didnt' seem to do anything - If the goal is to create just 1 of each human structure, there should probably be a big green checkmark on the building in the construction panel when you do just to make it clearer. - I did run into the lag spike issue but I managed to finish the game regardless!

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I think this game can definitely be expanded, with more missions, more challenges, maybe something dangerous to defend your colony from, maybe some story elements, etc. But I like it a lot. I really enjoyed the theme too! Well done :)